Don't parlez-vous? Google enhances Translate app

The inclusion of Siri on the iPhone 4S has brought a lot of attention generally to the topic of voice recognition on mobile devices. But voice is an area that Google, among others, has spent a lot of time trying to perfect, using data intensive "machine learning" technology.

Now, Google is updating a feature in its Translate app for Android devices that can handle speech-to-speech translation among 14 languages.

So if you speak, say, Indonesian, you can talk back and forth with someone who only speaks Russian (or Polish to Chinese ... or Korean to Turkish...).

In all, Google is adding a dozen languages to English and Spanish, which were the two languages initially featured in the app. Google first spilled the beans on this experimental Conversation Mode feature earlier this year. Now translations can happen in Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish.

In a company blog post, Google explains how it works: You speak into your phone's microphone, and the Translate app will translate what you've said and read it aloud. The person you're speaking with can then reply in their language, and Conversation Mode will translate what they said and read it back to you.

Google says you can correct misheard text (changing "train" to "rain" say) before it is translated, and add words to a personal dictionary. You can also view written translation results on the screen.

"Mobile technology and the Web have made it easier for people around the world to access information and communicate with each other," writes Google product manager Jeff Chin in the company post. "But there's still a daunting obstacle: the language barrier. We're trying to knock down that barrier so everyone can communicate and connect more easily."

Chin says the technology is still in an early stage "alpha" testing phase -- background noises and regional accents can negatively affect accuracy. "But since it depends on examples to learn, the quality will improve as people use it more. We wanted to get this early version out to help start the conversation no matter where you are in the world."

Google Translate for Android supports text translation among 63 languages, voice input in 17 of those languages, and text-to-speech in 24 of them, the company says.

The app is available in Google's Android Market. It will work, Google says, with tablets and phones running Android version 2.2 or later.